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Can you believe it’s been FOUR years since I blogged about my monthly planner and how I keep all my bills and events organized in one place? I noticed recently that it’s getting a lot of hits on Pinterest and I thought I’d post about how I’m keeping my planner now.

Currently, I’m using highlighters and small post-it notes to keep everything together. I’m not sure where to start, so I guess we’ll go from left to right.

On the border on the top left I use pink post-its with blog post ideas that I may want to blog about that month.

Then, once I blog about one of those ideas, I move the post-it to the day that I posted the blog, which isn’t necessary but is helpful in case you want to go back to previous months and look at what you’ve done.

On the bottom left margin I use these pale yellow (or as I like to call them, smoker’s teeth yellow) post-its with things that I HAVE TO get done during the month. And yes, I moved to PA from NJ back in May and I still have not gone to the DMV to get my license plates transferred. I just REALLY hate the DMV! Anyways, once I get an oil change or get my license plates registered, I’ll move that post-it to the day that I did it.

In my planner, I write when a bill is due. Since we moved, we’ve got a lot of credit card bills to pay off. So for example, I write down on the 4th that my Home Depot credit card bill is due, then under that I put what the balance is that I still owe. Then under that I write “New Balance” so on the 4th when I pay that bill, I write what the new balance is after making the payment. Then I take that new balance and put it on the next months post-it under “Still Owe”. This makes it easier to know where you’re at with each of your outstanding credit cards without having to look each one up online.

As for our other bills, like the mortgage, car payments, electric, etc., I just write down on the day that I pay them and then cross them off. I also highlight it in green, or in my case I highlight it in yellow and blue because I don’t have a green highlighter – haha!

I use these teal colored post-its for any kind of photo sessions I might have. I would just write that appointment in my planner but since moving to Easton, I have not required clients to pay a deposit to hold the appointment, so the appointment days change a lot. With the appointment being on a post-it, I can just move the post-it to any day they may change it to. It keeps my planner pretty so I don’t have to scratch out anything.

I use the bright pink post-its for fun events like birthday parties, people coming into town, events in the community, etc.

Btw, you can get these convenient post-its on Amazon and they’re super cheap. Pick them up here.

And that’s about it. I feel like my monthly planner has become a lot more efficient in the last four years and I hope it helps make your monthly planner more efficient as well!

Have you noticed that back-to-school sales are slowly but surely making their way into the weekly circulars? Have you also noticed that I’ve totally been slacking on the blog? My bad! But there’s a reason behind it which I’m excited to share with you all.

Anyways, back to the school supplies. I know people REALLY don’t want to hear about school supplies in the middle of July but buying early will really save you some money. I was at Walmart on Sunday and freaked out over $.97 binders! DORK ALERT, I know. I can’t help myself. They also have sales on notebooks and folders and some other awesome stuff that I couldn’t resist. I even got a 6” desktop fan for my desk at work since the AC in our building is, at the very least, inconsistent. If you’re in need of some school supplies for yourself or for the kids Walmart is the place to go this week! I’ve looked at a lot of the store circulars and though Target has some sales they’re not as great as Walmart’s sales. One subject notebooks for $.17. $.15 two pocket folders and Crayola markers and colored pencils for under $1! Not to mention the chocolate pudding snack packs for $1! (YUM!) It doesn’t get much better than that. I also picked up some index cards which I really only use for my grocery lists and a few reminders here and there and they were under a $1 also. I love Walmart! I don’t go very often because 1) Target is a lot closer to me and 2) They’re renovating their store and the parking lot is a mess and the store itself looks like it was hit by a bomb but my most recent trip was definitely a success!

So, the reason I’ve been kinda ignoring the blog lately is because I kinda got a promotion at work! I’ve really been craving a change and more responsibility at work and the opportunity finally came and I was very excited to grab it. I’ve been training for the last week and a half and it’s been exhausting and nerve-wracking. I’ve been training all day and then coming home from work and re-writing my notes. I’ve been a very busy chick but I know it’ll pay off in the long run. The majority of my new position is accounts payable but a lot of it has to do with keeping records and staying organized which I love to do any ways. It’s just so hard to take in all this information in such a short amount of time. I hope I retained all of it but we’ll see. WISH ME LUCK!

Today’s prompt:Publicly profess your love and devotion for one of your blogger friends. What makes them great? Why do you love them? If you don’t have blogger friends, talk about a real-life friend or even a family member.

This prompt was tricky for me. I don’t follow too many bloggers. Not because I don’t want to but because I haven’t found or searched for bloggers that I may be interested in. I’ve been OBSESSED with Story of My Life’s blog since I found it last week but I thought it would be extremely corny and not to mention weird to blog about her considering I’m on her blog like 2 hours out of the day trying to catch up on her life and I’m participating in her blogging challenge. So I decided to be super original and blog about my husband, Sam. I mention his name a lot on my blog but have never really talked about him but he definitely deserves a shout out and I believe this is the perfect opportunity.

My husband Sam has got to be the greatest man I’ve ever known, besides my dad of course. He’s always there for me, even when I’m upset and he doesn’t know what to say, he knows that him just being there is all I need. Whenever we have arguments he’s always the first person to say sorry because he knows how stubborn I am and to avoid us never speaking again, he gives in. He’s hilarious and the perfect bit of immature. I truly believe that men never completely mature, or at least don’t mature at the same speed that women do. I get that and I accept it, so when he laughs at his own farts, I can’t get too upset. He calls me things like “butt scratcher” and after not shower for a good 24 hours he says that my armpits “smell like India”. Totally inappropriate but the comedic value of it all makes it ok. He is a genuine goofball but he’s also got a huge heart. Each day I am becoming a better person simply because he’s in my life, transforming me in a way, to being a better and more complete me. I couldn’t have asked for a better person to share my life with. I love you Bubby Bear!

5 Facts About Sam:

– He’s a HUGE Chicago Bulls fan and so relieved that they beat the Nets last night (woo-hoo!)

– He was born in Georgetown, Guyana.

– His favorite album of all-time is Jay-Z’s Reasonable Doubt.

– He’s pretty superstitious and has weird rituals that he does that he thinks will improve his team’s chances of victory. (Including not letting his feet touch the floor during the game, keeping his hands folded a certain way, ect.)

I’m sitting at Barnes and Noble right now. Just got a black ice tazo tea unsweetened and I’m feeling good, finally, considering I’m out of work for the weekend. I’m just passing time until I need to go pick Sam up from work at 5 and I’m looking out across the busy parking lot. People coming in and out of the store. Cars buzzing by. People walking back and forth. It should be relaxing to just sit here and type what I’m seeing and how I’m feeling. But I’m bothered. Not by anyone in the parking lot or in the store for that matter. Not bothered by any noises or loud children. It’s actually fairly quiet here. I’m bothered because my back is to the entire store. I’m not sure why this bothers me haha! I’m waiting for a table to open up near me that I can slip into without looking like a complete idiot. If I have to sit here much longer I’m going to leave. It’s weird not being able to see what’s going on behind me. I can’t prevent an attack from behind in this position which is unlikely but very scary. Nonetheless, I’m trying to not think about it which is why I’m even writing this but considering I’m writing about it I’m afraid it’s not helping. I’m kinda hungry and I noticed that they sell The Cheesecake Factory’s red velvet cheesecake which I’ve had before and LOVED but I’ll hate myself later for it. On top of all the calories I don’t like eating in front of people when I’m alone. I’ll stuff my face to hell when I’m with someone or a group of people but when I’m alone I feel silly eating. Godddd, why am I so weird?! I also left my phone in the car by accident which is giving me a little bit of anxiety.

OHHHH! A table behind me just opened up. See ya later guys! Have a good weekend.

I’ve been racking my brain to the maximum extreme trying to come up with some more creative ideas for my sister’s country themed graduation party in June. If you missed my first post about it and some of the ideas I had, you can catch up here. I’ve told a lot of my coworkers about the country western themed fiesta to see if maybe they had any good ideas that I can steal use. One of my coworkers mentioned to me that there is a website that has cheap party decorations for pretty much any theme. It’s www.orientaltrading.com. I’ve never heard of this site and I was soooo excited once I checked it out. I have multiple things in my online cart that I’m just waiting to pull the trigger on but before I tell you about those I wanted to let you know that the invites came in the mail and I’m starting to send them out little by little. And what I mean when I say little by little is that I’m waiting for my mom to get me some of the addresses for some of the people that I can’t find on http://www.whitepages.com. Blah! I also got this cute cowboy boot stamp for the back of the invites on clearance at Michaels this week.

I think it adds the perfect touch considering the invites say absolutely nothing about country themed anything which I kinda regret now.

I saw these country western photo props. I was thinking about cutting out mustaches and stuff and hot glueing them to a stick so that people can use them in the homemade photobooth that I mentioned in my other post. I was kinda dreading it but now I feel fantastic that I don’t need to do any of that and this comes with more awesome stuff than just mustaches.

Another item that popped out at me was this luau table skirt that I think would still fit in with a country theme party considering it is basically faux hay. I think it would look nice with a white table clothe with a thick strip of burlap running down the middle. We’ll see.

Getting extremely excited as the days and weeks get closer to the party!

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UPDATE!

To see how the country themed grad party turned out, along with pictures from the photo booth, click here.

My sister is graduating high school in a little over a month and I’m in utter disbelief. I can’t believe she’s about to go to college and about to turn 18 and be an adult.

This is one of her senior pictures that I took recently.

Graduating high school means there’s going to be a graduation party! I’m helping my mom with the planning. I ordered the invites on Thursday night and we’ve decided that it’s going to be a country themed party because my sister loves cowboy boots and cowboy hats and all the country music and country boys and pickup trucks and what not. I’m not a fan of any of that but I love all the rustic decor. My mom is taking care of all the food and catering and stuff and I’m taking care of all the decorations and a homemade photobooth! I’m super excited about the photobooth actually. I wanted to share my progress with you guys and let you in on some of my ideas so you can let me know if it sounds stupid or if there are ways to improve them.

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First things first! Every grad party needs one of those photo memory boards with pictures of the graduate at all different ages. I’m thinking that instead of putting together the typical board I’m going to hang a few different layers of twine on the wall and use clothes pins to hold the pictures. I tried to search for something that was similar to what I want to do and all I came up with is this…

I want to do something like this but with the twine not so droopy. I got the twine and the clothespins and did a small test run just to make sure the pictures stay put and they do! So hopefully that will work out.

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Another thing that I’m super excited about are these cool jar beverage spout things. I’m not sure what they’re called but I figured they’re perfect for lemonade or iced tea or even some kind of wine spritzer.

I got them for $10 each at the Christmas Tree Shop near me and they look very rustic and country to me and considering I’m going to be using mason jars for flower vases and utensil holders I think it’ll go together very well.

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I wanted to make it a very feminine color scheme so we’re using a pink, a light pink, and gold as our main colors. I painted these mason jars and I think the colors look awesome together.

Normally people use their high school colors but my sister’s high school colors are black and blue which are very harsh to me so we’re going a little girly.

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As for the photobooth, I got some really awesome ideas from Lovely Indeeds blog post which you can find here. I’m going to be using streamers in all the colors I mentioned previously and I’m going to add tissue paper pom pom kinda things that will hang from the ceiling.

This is what hers looks like and I love how easy it is to put together.

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And lastly, for now, is this awesome milk can I found at Christmas Tree Shop.

This is my before and after picture. Before it had all these tropical looking flowers so I took some acrylic paint in a brick red color and painted it. I had to do a few coats but while doing my last coat I added some crimson red and some gold streaks which you can’t really tell from the picture. I’ll try and take a better picture at some point but I figured this would be an awesome flower vase that I can load with sunflowers. I may decorate the can a little more but I’m loving the color of it!

So, that’s it for now! Please help me with some more awesome simple ideas or ways to improve what I’ve already got.

It has been way too long since I’ve blogged. I’ve been pretty busy with work and family and stuff so I really, really, really apologize! I’ve been wanting to blog and have been really missing it lately but didn’t know how to jump back into it. I guess the easiest way is to just go ahead and start doing it, so here I am! As I’m typing this blog it feels awesome! I thought it would have taken me all day to write myself a welcome back post but I realized that getting back into blogging is somewhat like riding a bike. No matter how long you’ve been away you can always just jump back on as if you’ve never stopped. I have a few cool blog ideas for this week so stay tuned for that. Wish I was creative enough to come up with a new blog idea everyday but sadly, I’m not that good. Not yet any way.

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Hello and WELCOME! My name is Katie. I’m 29 years old and I live in Easton, PA. If I’m not busy making a complete mess of something then I’m usually busy organizing it. I overanalyze almost everything and like to hit the ground running. I’d say I’m somewhat of a free spirit in a sense that I like to get up and go whenever the mood strikes. My blog is full of silly stories, organizational tips/tricks, some DIY projects, and a lot of sarcasm and usually an awkward amount of profanity. Enjoy!